You were my Queen of rust
with your china doll hands and terracotta hair
lady of want and broken trust
friend of wild dog, promised to be fair.

A bush fire against a summer's rain
you are every little ache and pain
Open eye as the clock races by
a ghost town
torn down
again and again...

Let yourself dream in the mystery of sundown
but, where has your lover gone now?
Off to a land lush with the green of sycamore
the promise of something that again, has been found.
She has no use for a dessert or
a woman made of many shades of brown
when there was so much more color
before you came around.

Lost the taste for weakened gin and things like him,
lonely frozen months and lying in the warmth of his seat.
Forgiveness was my nutrients,
forgiveness was what kept me here,
forgiveness was my meat.

I had picked that skeleton all but clean and dry,
watched it crack and bleach with days gone by
sat gasping 'neath a summer's sky
and wished that I too, could die
feel the hollow grow of my eye.

Still that silver truck never rolled over the big dust hill
so I had to take up and leave
guide my weary soul to another man that yearned to ****.

Poseidon mourns with the mumbling sea,
froths and foams and falters,
for everything I long to grieve.
Silver tears fall, the fruit of tree.
I grow her from the cut of me,
watch her take up roots and leave.
Wait, while she becomes all I thought I'd be
and steals the silence from my memory -
abandons peace for chase of ecstasy.

I joined the worshiped in their gentle garden
and trampled every orchid, bright and sweet
just to prove I could win such pardon,
live to die another week.
We were all of warm and wild
skin feverish to lonely sun god's touch.
My tongue took blood of grape so mild
I found myself -nothing- in the middle of much.

I stare into your copper penny eyes
fresh from the sandy shore
and wonder, oh wonder
why don't mine look like that anymore?

Where the Applewood used to grow
and cotton blew lazy in the August breeze.
Back when you still kissed my cheek,
a time I allowed myself to breathe.

White house on the corner of Lover's lane.
Shaded, by the dapple of your lies
whispering of how we'd one day
look through its stained window panes
and plant red dahlias on its sides.

That birch wood is rotting now,
beetle has made it her home.
And I still recite unheard wedding vows
even after you are gone
and I; alone.

That broken eggshell,
smaller than the thumb that rests in my palm.
In a place where baby's breath grew,
quiet as linen sheets, peaceful as psalms.
Remember when skin scraped as child fell.
I knew that street, those callused feet
all too well.

I felt my soul was sealed up in that rotting tomb,
and now where had it gone?
With the ceramic pieces littered from her ghostly womb.
Hazy summer days I spent wrong.
Never thought, love passed on so soon.

I let it crinkle beneath the leather of my shoe
walk so gently on eggshells when I'm with you.
Have you any idea what you do?
hand me your tender moments, and gentle kisses
so few.

While I trace my fingers along my own body
until I am numb once more,
you are softly smiling
in the shade of an old cypress tree
creeping up her front door.